Weather Eye: Will ski areas be open by Thanksgiving?

Wednesday was another slow day in the weather department, with high pressure holding over us. Another weak weather system moves in overnight and early Friday with maybe a quarter-inch of rain in the bucket.

Another weather system may bring more rain or showers over the weekend and we keep a chance of rain all through next week. Just how much rain is up in the air, but I think it will be on the light side, not our usual offering.

We are now two weeks into November and rainfall in Vancouver stands at .40 of an inch, 2 inches below average. Still no progression of good autumn storms headed our way yet. Longer-range forecast models show some signs of heavier rain and mountain snows in the seven- to 10-day outlook.

The week of Thanksgiving we may see below-average temperatures with lower snow levels, but the main precipitation may be slipping south of us. One can only hope for snow in the ski areas for Thanksgiving weekend. Only a 50-50 chance at the moment.

We all know all it takes are a couple good storms like we had back in October to dump 2 or 3 feet of snow. Keep doing the snow dances.

Wednesday we had a high of 53 and a low of 45 degrees. The average for this date is 54 and 41 degrees. I see no freezing weather coming up, with highs running a bit above average in the 50s and lows in the 40s.

Ten years ago in this column I wrote this, “Several ski areas in the Oregon and Washington Cascades are open this week with plenty of fresh powder on the way. As freezing levels drop even the lower ski areas will accumulate a good base. They say any time you can open the ski area by Thanksgiving it is a good year. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some wet snowflakes fall to the lower foothills late in the week.”

Alas, that was November 2009. We can only hope.